Secret Santicorn 2019

Sky Seeker asked:
Dear Santicorn,
Please bring me

New ways to mess with time/space/fate, be it mechanics, spells, worldbuilding or beyond. If pokemon can reboot the universe to patch in a baby god we can do better: https://youtu.be/GxC1kXm_AVs

The Slipsoul – a Character Option

Infinite parallel universes teem around us, multitudes branching out with every decision and movement. Normally, these worlds are inaccessible and inhospitable. But when you die, your mind does not go gently into the night, but casts about wildly to find purchase on any reality that will take it. When you’re lucky, it’s relatively close to the world your remember.

These rules assume a D&D-ish game, but could be easily adapted to others. Mechanical effects, if any, are left as an exercise for the referee and the effects of further re-rolls are left open to negotiation.

Whenever you fail a death save, roll on the slide table and appear stabilized, but in a different reality. That this reality is different is apparent only to you. For example, if you roll “No eyes” the wound is old, and your companions may remember how you lost them. If you later re-roll the same number, you find yourself instead in the universe the next column over, as your mind reaches for further and further branches of reality. For example, if you roll a “1” a second time, then you still have no eyes, but find yourself able to see spirits.

The Slide Table

d12	First	Second	Third	Fourth
1	No eyes.	See spirits.	See the past.	Something else sees what you see.
2	Covered in tattoos.	Know and can cast random spell.	Spell casts itself when you take damage.	No one else can cast the spell.
3	Dave loyally follows you everywhere.	Davinia also follows you everywhere.	Dave & Davinia are retired in the city.	Nobody has ever heard of Dave or Davinia.
4	Pockets full of money.	Warrant for your arrest.	Owe a criminal favor.	Run a small gang.
5	Forsaken by religions.	Resting grants no benefit.	There are no stars.	Free from the wheel of death and rebirth.
6	No fingers on off hand.	Off-arm is a tentacle.	+d6 tentacles.	You are an octopus.
7	Lycanthropy.	Contacts despise you.	Covered in scars.	+d6 wolf companions.
8	Slide on any failed save.	Slide instead of save.	Optionally, slide instead of skill check.	Roll twice when sliding.
9	Super nice clothes.	Parents look for you.	Assassin targets you.	Inherit a small estate.
10	Require double rations.	Do not need sleep when you rest.	Cannot heal naturally.	Begin to rot.
11	Very short.	Darkvision.	Stonecunning.	Ancestors will aid you.
12	False leg.	Key hidden in leg.	Compartments in limbs.	Need regular maintenance.

Printout

I also made this printout of the table, so that you might have the satisfaction of striking the universes you've already rolled.

Licking the Bowl

Taking the prompt as "petty uses of cosmic power", I also sketched out two other ideas.

Fold Self – a GLOG Spell

When you rest to heal, you can choose not to heal any number of HP, instead leaving part of yourself (astrally) in that location. When casting the spell, roll [dice] over (max HP - HP at that location) to transport yourself and your carried objects to that location. This isn't really teleportation, it's more like squeezing a four-dimensional water wiggly.

Johnny Luckturner – an NPC Outline

Recently broke off from a larger organization and they're not happy about it. All their best people have returned broken or not at all. Maybe a bunch of bumbling patsies could get the job done?

Whenever multiple dice are rolled against Johnny, only the worst value is used (even if they would normally sum). Sneak attacks, advantages, fireballs, etc. all fall flat before his absurd luck. He doesn't know how this works though, and he's a pretty average combatant.

Discourse & Discord

“The Discourse”

I can't keep up with The Discourse. There's always something happening, and I mostly don't care. But I try to be a good person and also to not support shitty people, so I have to care a little.

I stopped using the "OSR" tag on this blog, because it has been associated with a lot of terrible people, and also it seemed unnecessary¹. This was an imperfect solution because "OSR" has a defined sensibility that it was useful to have a name for. (*DREAM is a cool group, but I think it's turning into something different—compare a game like Songbirds V2 with a game like Bastionland.)

Then Zedeck had a thread and pointed out that it was selfish to continue playing in the space but to disown the label. I still respect people who used to be "OSR" and then decided that it didn't actually describe the games they enjoy, or that it wasn't worth dealing with the people. But I'll try to use the "OSR" tag for my stuff where it seems relevant, and also to be a decent person.

Discord

Where is the OSR community now? As far as I engage with it: mostly Discord. Many Discord servers are runaway reactors of creativity. Unfortunately, they're also transient, and brief conversations get lost. Here's some things to come of them that I hope others might find useful.

Troika! Backgrounds Jam

I may never play Troika! proper, but it's an infectious idea. Similarly, I don't know if I'll ever sell my games, but itch.io seems to be where the cool games are these days. The Troika! Backgrounds Jam was apparently the push I needed to throw something together and put it on itch². The jam is over, but this clip of how-to seems worth keeping:

(Instructions from Jared Sinclair, used by permission.)

And here is my entry, loosely inspired by Dial H:

I went ahead and put Bloodring up there too:

Alternate Beholders

Something about a beholder demands an answer. "Dungeons and Dragons" is nominally about dragons, but you know you're really playing D&D when you see a beholder. The 5e Monster Manual has three or four variant beholders. The AD&D Monstrous Manual has twelve. Everyone wants to do their own take³.

So the OSR Discord server was brainstorming alternative "beholders": burning wheels of eyes, disco-laser robots, etc. And I had what I thought was a pretty good idea, and now a bona fide meme: An Octopus with Too Many Wands. Now that we've survived one in Spwack's game, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share the idea here for posterity. It's a great monster: it's weird, it's dangerous, it's intuitive, and it makes its own treasure.

(Art from Nate Treme, used by permission.)

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1 I call all the games I play "D&D" in speech, even things like Mothership. It's just easier sometimes.^back

2 Looking back at my blogging, I find I am unexpectedly motivated by challenges and competitions, even though I am not a competitive person by nature.^back

3 What I can find on short notice includes:

• The Panopticium
• The Lookyloo
• The Ones Left Behind
• Improved Beholders

But there are many many more, I'm sure.^back

Quick "Trainstorm"

Skerples proposes a collaborative dimension-hopping train. This is a quick brainstorm about trains, to help myself and others get started.

Image Source

Plan

1. Listen to Steve Reich.
2. Read Wikipedia.
3. Discuss on Chris McDowall's OSR Discord server.

Types of Railcar

and maybe some thoughts about how they exist in an interdimensional infinite train that never stops (unless it does sometimes).

• Refrigerator cars. Unirionically called "reefers".
• Various maintenance cars. The clean the ballast, rearrange the ballast, clear the snow, distribute lubricant and herbicide, and measure the track geometry. Consider how these tasks change when the ground underneath the ballast is unknown and can change suddenly.
• Rail ambulances. Provide services to remote areas, but on an endless non-stop train, they more likely act as hospitals.
• Specialized cargo cars. Coil cars are designed specifically to carry rolled-up sheet metal. Slate waggons are designed specifically to carry slate. On a train that could be carrying any kind of exotic material, what considerations would the car carrying it need?
• Stock cars. Carrying a bunch of exotic animals across dimensions doesn't really need much explanation I think. It raises the same questions as all cargo does, but is more immediately gameable. Possibly it would act more like a zoo or a farm though, given the circumstances.
• Schnabel cars. The cargo forms an integral part of these cars, without it they're just "ends". Use this as an excuse to make the middle of a car be anything you want.
• There are all kinds of tanks and hoppers and boxcars for general cargo. Other than the futility of regularly transporting cargo on the Indefinite Express, I'm not sure what to do with these. I guess instead of regular shipping from one location to another, you might have powerful dimensional merchants who trade their wares as they can, possibly lording over several cars just for cargo. This all presupposes that the train will make stops though.
• Railroad cranes. Ostensibly used for maintenance, these ones could easily be used to snatch interesting things while thundering past them.
• Mail cars. I did not realize that the mail is actively sorted while in transit, so that it's ready to ship out when it arrives. I don't know what to do with this though.
• Dining cars. Probably more like farms or shopping malls here.
• Sleeping cars. Where people live? Possibly unremarkable.

See Also

• The Great Train Robbery
• Other Train Robberies
• The Pullman Strike
• Other Train Strikes
• Hobos

I would like to be sure that nobody thinks this is final in any way. I'm just trying to pretend that my Wikipedia binge was useful. I would hate for my interpretation of something to step on the toes of anyone else's great idea.

Bloodring

A natural consequence of bad ideas. My entry in the Into the Odd PocketMod Jam (2019). CW: slavery, combat as sport.

Motivation

• Make gladiatorial combat interesting in a game where combat is best avoided.
• Provide an opportunity for things to get worse.
• Create something useful within the given constraints (time, form factor).

Notes

• Amounts of money are rough. Pay should be enough to motivate free gladiators, but not so much that slaves are freed too quickly.
• After first blood, combat is assumed to take turns.
• Mutilations are meant to give combat consequences between "death" and "recovery". They also convey the passage of time on days when PCs do not fight.
• Making more gladiators is easy: For captive gladiators I used 3d6. For free gladiators I used 4d6 drop lowest. For simpicity everyone starts with 1d6 HP and no mutilations.
• As a starting point for adventure it still feels lacking to me because it doesn't provide many motivations of its own and takes away a lot of the PCs' toys.
• Combat should be survivable enough that characters don't necessarily die, but unpleasant enough that PCs consider escape or revolt or other things preferable.
• Consider gambits from Moonhop or extra HP from Electric Bastionland (under "Scars").

Learnings

• The booklet was written in LibreOffice with an A7 paper size. It's apparently quite difficult to do N-up printing without a margin, so I ended up using PDFResizer.com. Had I time, I would like to use PDFjam.
• The PocketMod format really forces an economy of words. I found myself writing sentences that were barely intelligible in other contexts.
• The cover image is Piranesi. The Wound Man is Ambroise Paré.
• Printing on US letter paper, I found printing at 98% was the largest I could get before I lost things to the margins. This is why all my PocketMods are slightly off-kilter. The reasonable thing to do would be to print them all with outlines and then trim the paper to size, but that's work. Or find a printer that goes to the edges.

Files

bloodring-A7.pdf - for viewing on a screen.

bloodring-A4.pdf - for printing on A4 paper.

bloodring-US.pdf - for printing on US letter paper.

bloodring-A7.odt - for editing

I think I might know someone...

When I first moved to Buffalo and didn't know anyone in the area, I ended up staying with my girlfriend's roommate's mother's friends in the area (they were great people). When someone on the OSR discord was asking for a good contacts system I thought I would try my hand at one that reminds me of that connection. I figure this is probably half a solid contacts mechanic, so I hope someone gets use out of it.

Draft One

Roll	Relation (1d20, 1d10)	Ability (1d6)	Strength (1d8)	Weakness (1d12)
1	classmate	fence item	loaded	owe them money
2	roommate	carry stuff	trustful	addiction
3	friend	employ party	respected	snitch
4	fiance(e)	get information	loyal	hunted
5	drinking buddy	get item	manners	dumb
6	ex	teach skill	cautious	cowardly
7	landlord		learned	unwashed
8	tenant		strong	hidden
9	coworker			bad blood
10	boss			cursed
11	brother			mad
12	sister			busy
13	cousin
14	uncle
15	aunt
16	niece
17	nephew
18	mother
19	father
20	grandparent

This is what I made initially, and you can see it with a little more in the Google doc. When you have a chance to meet new contacts, you can roll up a contact at two removes (e.g. 1d20 and 1d10 under "Relation"). If that contact doesn't work out for you, add another d10 to relationship, then another d20, and so on each time you need a new contact before you can naturally make more.

Draft Two

Then I thought I'd try automating this process, because that's trendy these days. This generator owes a lot to Betty Bacontime and Spwack's work, but I had to rework it to make it do what I wanted it to.

DIE TRYING

I have had the pleasure to play in two of Spwack's DIE TRYING playtests. While I'm only talking about the DIE TRYING rules here, these can be difficult to separate from Spwack's play style. I can also only discuss the rules that I've encountered so far.

Click for the DIE TRYING rules. (Image credit: "Bogeyman")

The rules start with 7 pages of character generation. This is garbage unnecessary¹. You need two links to make a character:

• Spwack's Random Character Generator
• Optional: Character Intensifier [non sic]

This is the first great innovation in DIE TRYING: to automate character generation without loss of interest. It's 1% of the effort of rolling an OD&D character with all the nuance of a million pounds of Pathfinder splatbooks. I recommend making one now, just to see what I mean.

And yet, for all the tricks and abilities your new character will have, they will still be lacking. One of my characters started with a spell, but no magic dice. Both of my characters started with the eye of a malign entity upon them. Another party member started with a mystery egg, and no way to hatch it. Every character is very weak and readily dismemberable.

This is the core of it: DIE TRYING is a game of want. I'm sure you can starve to death in the game, but mere hunger and encumbrance and exhaustion are not its motivating factors. Instead, DIE TRYING presents a world full of interaction and interest. Then it gives you characters that have abilities, but not power, and an immediate need to fill that gap in order to survive. Where the rules shine is the lists of ways to get more power and learn new abilities. Because you will need those to live.

This leads to the other major innovation in DIE TRYING: the X system. Characters get ad-hoc Xs instead of experience. Xs are awarded for achieving things or failing terribly, for good plans and bad ideas. Xs are awarded out-of character for things like attendance, character portraits, or this review². And Xs aren't some nebulous investment in an eventual "level", they go directly towards meeting immediate needs. You can add an X to anything on your character sheet that needs more oomph behind it. I had a crowbar on its last legs, but with an X I shined it up good and now I have an acid-resistant crowbar. I appeased an ancient king, and now I have a little more leeway when dealing with it. After three Xs, my colleague's egg hatched, and now his "son" is a helpful slime that he carries with him.

In case I've been unclear (and even were I not being "compensated" for this review) I've had a genuinely great experience with the system. Especially if you're in Spwack's timezone, I believe he's still playtesting on Discord, and I recommend it.

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1 The main reason I favor "OSR" type systems is that I find character generation to be a chore. The main thing I miss about more "bloated" systems is the bizarrely specific characters you could build, like a mutant half-elf blind seer/assassin. If this were my system, I would do it like Perl: the generator is the rules, and then relegate the whole 7 pages to an appendix.^back

2 Missed opportunity for a hot take: "DIE TRYING is a transmedia storytelling project that blurs the line between platform and experience and transcends traditional narrative frames." For real though, the same colleague with the egg got an X for opening a door with a big red "X" painted on it. We knew in advance that he would, but I'm not sure if it's because it was an obviously bad idea (it was), or if it's because it had an "X" on it.^back

Being Useful

Always feels good to help people with things. Sometimes this is just recommending resources, but sometimes I get to flex my slowly-dying engineer muscles. These are two things I got to help people with recently on some Discord chats, but Discord is temporary so I'm writing them down here for posterity.

RPS Mechanics in Play-by-Post Games

Image source: wikimedia.

Rock-paper-scissors only works in person because you can throw more-or-less simultaneously. In a play-by-post environment, someone has to go first. Here's how:

1. Alice generates a random number and appends it to her choice.
   Example: "paper04"
2. Alice takes a hash* of the result and shares it.
   Example: "md5:fbe1a7f5e0330c5cf5a986d40065a21e"
3. Bob shares his choice.
   Example: "scissors"
4. Alice shares her original string.
   Example: "paper04"
5. Bob checks the hash of the original string.

This is not a protocol focused on security. For example, given that the salt is a number 00-99, Bob could generate a rainbow table of all the possible checksums and guess Alice's answer before she revealed it.
It could be automated in some ways if you ran the forum, for example, a bot could automate the final check.

Weighted Selection from a Compact Table

It's common for a table in a book to be formatted like:

1-10. Very common result
11-15. Less common result
16-19. Slightly less common result
20. Very rare result

This is useful if you want to mimic a specific type of distribution given a flat input curve. The theory is that if you use this table a lot, then it will make the results feel more natural.
This presents a problem if you would like to automatically roll on the table in a spreadsheet. A naive way to do this is the format it like:

(A1) Very common result
(A2) Very common result
(A3) Very common result
. . .
(A20) Very rare result

But this is time-consuming and annoying to change. Using VLOOKUP, you can format it like:

(A1) 10 (B1) Very common result
(A2) 15 (B2) Less common result
(A3) 19 (B3) Slightly less common result
(A4) 20 (B4) Very rare result

And then roll as normal. There is a (rough) proof of concept here. There's a couple mistakes in it, but if you play around with it you can see how it works.
Cols A & B are the actual table, while Cols C & D are for illustrative purposes and aren't necessary for the table to function. Cols E & F show how an automated roller might function.
* = I use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. If you search "md5 [term]" it will auto-suggest the md5sum of "[term]", which is neat. Wolfram Alpha also does this.